The image it presented to him was mostly that of
criminal
neglect.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
That is in no way to be taken for militarism, of which old Kakania was thoughtlessly accused; it was only common sense and prudence: for order cannot be otherwise than in order I more properly: it is, so to speak, already by its very nature in order I while, with every other kind of conduct the state engages in, this remains eternally uncertain.
This order had become second nature in Kakania in the Franzisco-Josephenian era, indeed it had almost become landscape, and it is quite certain that ifthe quiet times ofpeace
1484 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
had lasted longer, the priests, too, would have got swords just as long, as the university professors had got them after the finance authorities and the postal officials, and if a world upheaval with entirely different views had not intervened, the sword would perhaps have developed in Ka- kania into a spiritual weapon.
When the conversation had proceeded to this point, partly in an ex- change of views, partly in the reminiscences that were their silent ac- companiment, General Stumm put in: "That, by the way, is something Leinsdorf said already, that the priests really must receive their swords at the next concordat, as a sign that they, too, are performing a function in the state. He then hedged this with the less paradoxical remark that even small daggers might suffice, with mother-of-pearl and a gold han- dle, of the kind officials used to wear. "
"Are you serious? ''
"He was," the General replied. "He pointed out to me that in Bohe- mia during the Thirty Years' War priests rode around in mass-robes of gilt that were leather below-in other words, proper mass-dragoons. He is simply exasperated at the general hostility directed against the state, and recalled that in one of his castle chapels he still has such a garment preserved. Look, you know how he's always talking about the constitu- tion of '61 having given capital and culture the lead here, and that this has led to a big disappointment-"
"How did you actually happen to meet Leinsdorf? " Ulrich inter- rupted him with a smile.
"Oh, that came about when he was on his way back from one of his estates in Bohemia," Stumm said, without going into greater detail. "Moreover, he has asked you to come see him three times, and you haven't gone. In B. on the way back, his car blundered into the riots and was stopped. On one side of the street stood the Czechs, shouting: 'Down with the Germans! ' on the other side the Germans shouted: 'Down with the Czechs! ' But when they recognized him they stopped that and asked in chorus in both German and Czech: 'What's going on with the Commission to Ascertain the Desires of the Concerned Sec- tions of the Population, Count? ' and some screamed 'Phooey! ' at him and others 'Shame! ' This stupid Resolution, that one should let oneself be killed for one's own ideas but not other people's, appears to have spread by word of mouth, and because we suppressed it we're now sus- pected of wanting to be the murderer of nationalities! That's why Leins- dorf said to me: 'You're his friend; why doesn't he come when I call him? ' And all I could do was offer: 'Ifyou wish to entrust me with some- thing, I will inform him! ' "
Stumm paused.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1485
"And what . . . ? " Ulrich asked.
"Well, you know it's never really easy to understand what he means. First he talked to me about the French Revolution. As is well known, the French Revolution lopped off the heads of many of the nobility, and astonishingly he finds that quite proper, although stones had almost been thrown at him in B. For he says that the ancien regime had its mistakes, and the French Revolution its true ideas. But what ultimately resulted from all the effort? That's what he was asking himself. And then he said the following: Today, for example, the mail is better and quicker; but earlier, while the mail was slow, people wrote better letters. Or: Today clothing is more practical and less ridiculous; but earlier, when it was like a masquerade, far better materials were used. And he concedes that for longer trips he himself uses an automobile because it's faster and more comfortable than a horse-drawn coach, but he maintains that this box with springs on four wheels has deprived traveling of its true nobil- ity. All that's funny, I think, but it's true. Didn't you yourself once say that as mankind progresses one leg always slides backward whenever the other slides forward? Involuntarily, each of us today has something against progress. And Leinsdorf said to me: 'General, earlier our young people spoke of horses and dogs, but today the sons of factory owners talk of horsepower and chassis. So since the constitution of '61, liberal- ism has shoved the nobility aside, but everything is full of new corrup- tion, and if against expectations the social revolution should ever happen, it will lop the heads off the sons of factory owners, but things won't get any better either! ' Isn't that something? You get the impres- sion that something is boiling over in him. With someone else, one might perhaps think that he doesn't know what he wants! "
But in the meantime we've only got as far as the national revolution?
"Do you know what he wants? " Ulrich asked.
"After the business in B. , Drangsal tried to have him informed that now one would really have to let oneself be unconditionally swept up in the Ideal of Man, and Feuermaul is supposed to have expressed himself to the effect that it's better as an Austrian not to master the resistance of the nationalities than it is as a German to transform one's country into a field for army maneuvers. To this Leinsdorf's only response was that that wasn't realpolitik. He wants a proclamation of power; which is to say, of course it should also be a proclamation of love; that, after all, had been the original idea of the Parallel Campaign. W e must, General'-
1486 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
these were his words-'proclaim our unity; that is less contradictory than it seems, but also not as easy! ' "
Hearing this, Ulrich forgot himself and gave a rather more serious re- sponse. "Tell me," he asked, "doesn't all the talk about the Parallel Cam- paign ever seem rather childish to you? "
Stumm looked at him with astonishment. "Well, yes," he replied hesi- tantly. "When I'm talking this way with you, or with Leinsdorf, it does sometimes seem to me that I'm talking like an adolescent, or that you're philosophizing about the immortality of cockchafers; but doesn't that come with the subject? Where it's a question of sublime missions, one never has the feeling of being able I allowed to talk the way one really is.
Agathe laughed.
Stumm laughed along with her. ''I'm laughing too, dear lady! " he af- firmed in a worldly-wise way, but then seriousness returned to his face and he went on: "But strictly speaking, what the Count means is by no means so wrong. For instance, what do you understand by liberalism? " With these words he again turned to Ulrich, but without waiting for a reply he went on again: "What I mean is that people ought to be left to themselves. And it will also have struck you that that's now going out of fashion. It's given rise to a lot ofnonsense. But is that all it is? It seems to me people want something more. They aren't content with themselves. I'm not either; I used to be an amiable person. You didn't really do any- thing, but you were satisfied with yourself. Work wasn't bad, and after work you played cards or went hunting, and there was in all of that a certain kind of culture. A certain wholeness. Doesn't it seem so to you too? And why isn't it like that anymore today? As far as I can judge from myself, I believe that people feel too clever. Ifyou want to eat a schnit- zel, it occurs to you that there are people without one. If someone is after a pretty girl, it suddenly goes through his mind that he really ought to be thinking about settling some conflict or other. That's this insuffer- able intellectualism that you can't ever shake off today, and that's why there's no going forward anywhere. And without knowing it themselves, people again want something. That means they no longer want a compli- cated intellect, they don't want a thousand possibilities for living; they want to be satisfied with what they're doing anyway, and for this all they need is to get back some belief or conviction or-well, how to describe what they need to do that? I'd like to hear your opinion about all this! "
But that was only self-satisfaction on the part of the animated and ex- cited Stumm, for before Ulrich could even pull a face, he sprang his surprise: "Of course one can just as well call it belief as conviction, but I've thought a lot about it and prefer to call it single-mindedness! "
Stumm paused, with the idea of garnering applause before he un-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1487
veiled further insights into the workshop of his mind, and then there mingled with the weighty expression on his face another, which was as superior as it was tired of enjoyment. "We used to talk a lot about the problems of order," he reminded his friend, "and so we don't have to stop over them today. So order is to a certain extent a paradoxical notion. Every decent person has a yearning for internal and external order, but on the other hand, you can't bear too much ofit; indeed, a perfect order would be, so to speak, the ruination ofall progress and pleasure. That is (already) inherent, as it were, in the concept oforder. And so you have to ask yourself: what is order after all? And how does it happen that we imagine we're not able to exist without it? And what kind of order is it that we're looking for? A logical, a practical, an individual, a general order, an order of the emotions, of the mind, or of actions? De facto, there's a heap oforders all mixed up: taxes and customs duties are one, religion another, military regulations a third; there's no end of searching them out and enumerating them. I've been preoccupied with this, as you know, and I don't believe that there are many generals in the world who take their profession as seriously as I've had to do this past year. I've helped after my fashion in the search for an encompassing idea, but you yourself ended up proclaiming that to order the spirit one would need an entire global secretariat, and even you'll have to admit that we can't wait for such an ordering. But on the other hand, one can't use that to let everyone do whatever he wants! "
Stumm leaned back and drew breath. The most difficult part had now been said, and he felt the need to excuse himself to Agathe for the gloomy dryness ofhis behavior, which he did with the words: "You must excuse me, but your brother and I had an old and difficult account to settle; but from now on it will also be more suitable for ladies, for I'm again back to where I was, that people don't have any use for compli- cated intellect, but would like to believe and be convinced. For if you analyze this, you'll find that the least important thing about the order to which man aspires is whether reason will approve of it or not; there are also totally ungrounded kinds of orders: for instance, the one that's al- ways asserted in the military about one's superior always being right, meaning, o f course, so long as his superior isn't around. How I puzzled over this as a desecration of the world of ideas when I was a young offi- cer! And what do I see today? Today it's called the principle of the leader-"
''Where did you get that? '' Ulrich asked, interrupting the lecture, for he had the distinct suspicion that these ideas were not just taken from a conversation with Leinsdorf.
"Everyone Wl'. 'lts strong leadership! And partly from Nietzsche, of
1488 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
course, and his interpreters," Stumm replied nimbly and learnedly. "What's already being called for is a double philosophy and morality: for leader and for led! But as long as we're talking about the military, I must say that the military excels not only in and for itself, as an element of order, but also in always making itself available when all other order fails! "
"The decisive things are happening above and beyond reason, and the greatness of life is rooted in the irrational! " Ulrich brought up, imitating his cousin Diotima from memory.
The General grasped this immediately but did not take offense. "Yes, that's the way she used to talk, your cousin, before she started investigat- ing the proclamations of love in, as it were, too great detail. " With this explanation he turned to Agathe.
Agathe was silent, but smiled.
Stumm again turned to Ulrich. "I don't know whether Leinsdorfhas perhaps said it to you too; at any rate, it's marvelously right: he maintains that the most important thing about a belief is that one always believe the same thing. That's something like what I'm calling single-minded- ness. 'But can civilians do that? ' I asked him. 'No,' I said. 'Civilians wear different suits every year, and every few years there are parliamentary elections so they can choose differently every time; the spirit of single- mindedness is much rather to be found in the military! ' "
"So you convinced Leinsdorf that a strengthened militarism is the true fulfillment of his aims? "
"God forbid, I didn't say a word! We merely agreed that in the future we would do without Feuermaul because his views are too unusable. And for the rest, Leinsdorf has given me a whole series of assignments for you-"
"That's superfluous! "
"You should quickly get him access to socialist circles-"
"My gardener's son is a zealous member of the party-that I can do! " "That's just fine! He's only doing it out of conscientiousness, because
he once got the idea in his head. The second thing is that you should go see him as soon as possible-"
"But I'm leaving in a few days! "
"Then as soon as you get back-"
"It doesn't look as if I'm ever coming back! "
Stumm von Bordwehr looked at Agathe; Agathe smiled, which en-
couraged him. "Crazy? " he asked.
Agathe shrugged her shoulders indecisively.
"Well, let me summarize once more-'' Stumm said.
"Our friend has had enough philosophy! " Ulrich interrupted him.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1489
"You certainly can't say that about me! " Stumm angrily defended himself. "It's just that we can't wait for philosophy. And I don't want to lie to you: ofcourse whenever I visit LeinsdorfI have orders to influence him in a certain way if it's possible, that you can imagine. And when he says that the most important thing about a belief is that one always be- lieve the same thing, he's thinking above all of religion; but I'm already thinking of single-mindedness, for that's more comprehensive. I don't hesitate to assert that a truly powerful philosophy of life can't wait around for reason; on the contrary, a true philosophy of life must be absolutely directed against reason, otherwise it would not get into the position of being able to force its submission. And the civilian world seeks such a single-mindedness in constant change, but the military has, so to speak, an enduring single-mindedness! Madame," Stumm inter- rupted his ardor, "you should not believe that I'm a militarist; quite the contrary, the military has always been even a little on the raw side for my taste: but the way the logic ofthese ideas grabs hold ofyou is like playing with a large dog: first he bites for fun, and then he gets carried away and goes wild. And I would like to grant your brother, as it were, one last opportunity-"
"And how do you connect that with the proclamation of power and love? " Ulrich asked.
"God, in the meantime I've forgotten," Stumm replied. "But of course these eruptions ofnationalism that we're now experiencing in our fatherland are somehow eruptions of the energy of an unhappy love. And also in this area, in the synthesis ofpower and love, the military is, in a certain sense, exemplary. A person has to have some kind of love for his fatherland, and ifhe doesn't have it for his fatherland, then he has it for something else. So you just need to grab hold of that something else. As an example that just occurs to me, take the term conscript-volunteer. Who would ever think that a conscript is a volunteer? That's the last thing he is. And yet he was and is, according to the sense of the law. In some such sense people have to be made volunteers again! "
ON THE YOUNG SOCIALIST SCHMEISSER
Conversations with Schmeisser
It was not the first time that Count Leinsdorf had expressed the opinion that a practitioner of realpolitik had to make use even of socialism in its search for allies against progress as well as nationalism, for he had re- peatedly begged Ulrich to cultivate this connection, since out of political considerations he did not just now wish to be caught doing it himself. He advised starting by approaching not the leaders but the young up-and- comers, those who were not completely corrupted and whose vitality permitted the hope that through them one might acquire a patriotically rejuvenating influence over the party. Then Ulrich remembered cheer- fully that there lived in his house a young man who never greeted him but looked away disdainfully whenever they met, which happened rarely enough. This was Schmeisser, a doctoral student in technical sciences; his father was a gardener, who had already been living on the property when Ulrich took it over and who had since, in exchange for free lodging and occasional gifts, kept the small old grounds in order partly with his own hands and partly by indicating and supervising any work that be- came necessary. Ulrich appreciated the fact that this young man, who lived with his father and earned the money for his studies by tutoring and doing a little writing, regarded him as one of the idle rich, who was to be treated with contempt; the experiment of inaction to which he was subject sometimes made him regard himself in this fashion, and he found pleasure in challenging his faultfinder when, one day, he stopped to talk with Schmeisser. It turned out that the student, who, moreover, seen from closer up, might already be twenty-six years old, had also been waiting for this moment, and immediately discharged the tension of the encounter in violent attacks, which ended between an attempt at con- version and the proffering of personal contempt. Ulrich told him about the Parallel Campaign, and thought he was doing the right thing by mak- ing his assignment out to be as ridiculous as it was while at the same time indicating the advantages a determined person might be able to draw from it. He was expecting Schmeisser to fall in with this scheme, which then with God's help might develop in rather strange directions; this
•schmeisser (the name means "flinger" or "hurler. . ) is the left-wing counterpart to the proto-Fascistic Hans Sepp. Peter Lindner seems to represent apolitical, amoral youth. - TRANs.
0
From the Posthumous Papers · 1491
young man, however, was no bourgeois romantic and adventurer, but listened with a crafty look around the mouth until Ulrich ran out of things to say. His chest was narrow between broad-boned shoulders, and he wore thick glasses. These really thick glasses were the beautiful part of his face, which had a sallow, fatty, blotchy skin; these thick glasses, made necessary by hard nights over his books and assignments and made stronger by poverty, which had not permitted him to consult a doctor at the first sign that he needed them, had become for Schmeisser's simple emotions an image ofself-liberation: when he spied them in the mirror, shining over his pimpled countenance with its sad- dle nose and sharp proletarian cheeks, it seemed to him like Poverty crowned by Intellect, and this had happened especially often since, against his will, he had come to admire Agathe from afar. Since then he had also hated Ulrich, to whom he had previously paid scant attention, for his athletic build, and Ulrich now read his damnation in these glasses and had the impression ofchattering away like a child playing in front of the barrels of two cannons. When he had finished, Schmeisser answered him with lips that could barely separate themselves for satisfaction at what they were saying: "The party has no need ofsuch adventures; we'll arrive at the goal in our own way! "
That was really giving it to the bourgeois!
After this rebuffit was hard for Ulrich to find more to say, but he went straight at his attacker and finally said with a laugh: "If I were the person you take me for, you ought to pour poison in my water pipes, or saw down the trees under which I stroll: why don't you want to do something of that sort in a case where it might really be called for? "
"You have no idea what politics is all about," Schmeisser retorted, "for you are a social-romantic member of the middle class, at most an indi- vidual anarchist! Serious revolutionaries aren't interested in bloody revolutions! "
After that, Ulrich often had briefconversations with this revolutionary who didn't want to start revolutions. "I already knew when I was a cav- alry lieutenant," he told him, "that in the short or long run mankind is going to be organized according to socialist principles in some form; it is, as it were, the final chance that God has left to it. For the fact that mil- lions of people are oppressed in the most brutal way, in order for thou- sands of others to fail to do anything worthwhile with the power that derives from this oppression, is not only unjust and criminal but also stu- pid, inappropriate, and suicidal! "
Schmeisser responded sarcastically: "But you've always settled for knowing that! Haven't you? There's the bourgeois intellectual for you! You've spoken to me a few times about a bank director who's a friend of
1492 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
yours: I assure you, this bank director is my enemy, I'll fight him, I'll show him that his convictions are only pretexts for his profits; but at least he has convictions! He says yes where I say no! But you? In you every- thing has already dissolved, in you the bourgeois lie has already begun to decompose! "
Ulrich objected peaceably: "It may be that my way ofthinking is bour- geois in origin; to some extent it's even probable. But: Inter faeces et urinam nascimur-why not our opinions as well? What does that prove against their correctness? "
Every time Ulrich spoke this way, reasoning politely, Schmeisser could not contain himself and exploded anew. "Everything you're saying springs from the moral corruption of bourgeois society! " he would then proclaim, or something similar, for there was nothing he hated more than that form ofgoodness opposed to reason which is found in amiabil- ity; indeed, all form, even that of beauty, was for him an object of suspi- cion. For this reason he never accepted even one of Ulrich's invitations, but at most let himself be treated to tea and cigarettes, as if in Russian novels. Ulrich loved to provoke him, although these conversations were completely meaningless. Since the year of liberation in '48 and the founding of the German Empire, events that only a minority now per- sonally remembered, politics probably seemed to the majority of edu- cated people more an atavism than an important subject. There was next to no sign that behind these external processes that plodded along out of habit, intellectual processes were already preparing for that deforma- tion, for that propensity for decline, and for the suicidal willingness aris- ing from self-loathing, which undermine a state of affairs and apparently always form the passive precondition to periods of violent political change. Thus his whole life long Ulrich, too, had been accustomed to expect that politics would bring about not what needed to happen but at best what ought to have happened long since.
The image it presented to him was mostly that of criminal neglect. The social question too, which formed the whole of Schmeisser's universe, appeared to him not as a question but merely as an omitted answer, though he could list a hun- dred other such "questions" on which the mental files had been closed and which, as one might say, were waiting in vain for manipulative treat- ment in the Office of Dispatch. And when he did that, and Schmeisser was in a gentle mood, the latter said: "Just let us first come to power! "
But then Ulrich said: "You're too kind to me, for what I'm asserting isn't true at all. Almost all intellectual people have this prejudice that the practical questions they understand nothing about would be easy to solve, but when they try, of course it turns out that they just haven't thought of everything. On the other hand-here I agree with you-if
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1493
the politician were to think of everything, he would never get around to acting. Perhaps that's why politics contains as much ofthe wealth ofreal- ity as of the poverty of spirit (lack of ideas)-"
This gave Schmeisser the opportunity for a jubilant interruption, with the words: "People like you never get around to acting because they don't want the truth! The bourgeois so-called mind is in all its works only a procrastination and an excuse! "
"But why don't people like me want? " Ulrich asked. "Why couldn't they want? Wealth, for example, is certainly not what they really desire. I hardly know a prosperous man who doesn't have a small weakness for it, myself included, but I also don't know a single one who loves money for its own sake, except for misers, and greed is a disturbance of personal conduct which is also found in love, in power, and in honor: the patho- logical nature of greed really proves that giving is more blessed than re- ceiving. By the way, do you believe that giving is more blessed than receiving? " he asked.
"You can raise that question in some aesthete's salon! " was Schmeisser's response.
"But I fear," Ulrich maintained, "that all your efforts will remain pointless as long as you don't know whether giving or receiving is more blessed or how they complement each other! "
Schmeisser crowed: "You no doubt intend to talk mankind into being good? Besides, in the socially organized state, the proper relationship of giving and receiving will be a foregone conclusion! "
"Then I will maintain"-Ulrich completed his sentence with a smile-"that you will just come to grief on something else, for instance that we are capable ofcursing someone as a dog even when we love our dog more than our fellowmen! "
A mirror calmed Schmeisser by showing him the image of a young man wearing thick glasses under a stubborn forehead. He gave no answer.
Ulrich had picked out this young man for the General and proposed that they go with the General to visit Meingast, for Schmeisser knew about this prophet, and even ifhe was a false one, still it was nothing new for Schmeisser to visit the gatherings of opponents; but Ulrich had cor- rectly guessed about his friend Stumm that at various times he was se- cretly gathering impressions from Clarisse, and through her had also made the acquaintance ofthe Master, who had made no small impres- sion. But when Ulrich told Agathe about his plan, she didn't want to hear about it.
1494 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Ulrich began to jest. - 1 bet that this Schmeisser is really in love with you-he maintained-and it's no secret that Lindner is. Both are for- men. Meingast, too, is afor-man. You'll end up winning him over too.
Agathe naturally wanted to knowwhatfor-men were.
-Lindner is a good person, isn't he? Ulrich asked.
Agathe confinned it, although for a long time she had not been as
enthusiastic on this count as she had been at the beginning.
-But he lives morefor religion than in a religious state?
Agathe didn't contest this at all.
- T h a t ' s j u s t w h a t a f o r - m a n is, U l r i c h e x p l a i n e d . - T h e e x t e n s i v e a c -
tivity he bestows upon his faith is perhaps the most important example, but it's just one example of the technique that's always used to make ideals tenable and available for everyday use. So he explained to her in detail his spontaneously invented notion oflivingfor and in something.
Human life appears to be just long enough so that in it, if one livesfor something, one can accomplish the trajectory from neophyte to Nestor, patriarch, or pioneer; and in doing so it matters less for human satisfac- tion what one lives for than that one can livefor something: a Nestor of the German brandy trade and the pioneer of a new worldview enjoy, besides similar honors, the same advantage, which consists in the fact that life, despite its fearful wealth, contains not a single problem that would not be simplified by being brought into contact with a worldview, but would be simplified just as much by being brought into contact with the production of brandy. Such an advantage is precisely what one calls, using a fairly recent term, rationalization, except that what is rational- ized is not skilled actions but ideas, and who today would not already be able to survey what that implies? Even in the slightest case this life for something is comparable to owning a notebook in which everything is entered and things that have been disposed of are neatly crossed out. Whoever does not do this lives in a disorderly fashion, never finishes things, and is bothered by their comings and goings; whoever, on the other hand, has a notebook resembles the thrifty paterfamilias who saves every nail, every piece of rubber, every scrap of material, because he knows that someday such a stock will come in handy in his household economy. But this solid, civicfor something, as it was handed down from one's father's generation as the height ofworthy endeavor, often too as a hobbyhorse or a secret detail one always keeps one's eye on, represented at that time something which was already somewhat old-fashioned; for a propensity for the broad scale, a yen for developing the living-for-some- thing in mighty associations, had already replaced it.
By this means what Ulrich had begun in jest took on, as he uttered it, more serious significance. The distinction he had hit upon tempted him
From the Posthumous Papers · 1495
with its inexhaustible prospects, and became for him at this moment one of those views that make the world fall asunder like a split apple under the knife, exposing what lies within. Agathe objected that one also often says that a person is completely subsumed by something, or lives and breathes it, although it was certain that according to Ulrich's nomencla- ture such ardent livers and breathers were doing it for whatever their affair might be; and Ulrich conceded that it would be more precise to proceed by distinguishing between the notions of"flnding oneselfin the state ofone's ideal" and "flnding oneselfin the state ofworking for one's ideal," but in which the second "in" was either unreal and in truth a "for," or the claimed relationship to working/or it would have to be an unusual and ecstatic one. Language, moreover, has its good reasons not to be so precise about this, since livingfor something is the condition of worldly existence, in, on the contrary, always that which one imagines and pretends to live, and the relation ofthese two states to each other is extremely refractory. People, after all, do secretly know, without, of course, being able to admit it, ofthe miraculous fact that everything "ifs worth living for" would be unreal if not actually absurd the moment one bied to immerse oneself in it completely. Love would never again arise from its lair; in politics, the slightest proofofsincerity would necessarily lead to the mortal destruction of one's opponent; the artist would spurn all contact with less perfect beings, and morality would have to consist not of perforated prescriptions but of taking one back to that childlike condition of love of the good and abhorrence of the bad which takes everything literally. For whoever really abhors crime would not flnd it too little to hire trained professional devils to torture prisoners as in old paintings of hellfue, and whoever loves virtue with his whole life ought to eat nothing but goodness until his stomach rises into his throat. What's remarkable is that at times things really do go that far, but that such periods of Inquisition or its opposite, gushing over the goodness of man, are in bad odor I bad memories I remain memories.
That is why it is simply to preserve life that mankind has succeeded in inventing, in place of"what it's worth living for," livingfor it or, in other words, putting its idealism in place of its ideal condition. It is a living before something; now, instead ofliving, one "sbives" and is henceforth a being that with all its energies presses on just as much toward fulfill- ment as it is exonerated from arriving at it. "Living for something" is the permanent principle of the "in. " All desires, and not just love, are sad after they are fulfllled; but in the moment in which the activityfor the desire fully takes the place of the desire, it is canceled out in an inge- nious way, for now the inexhaustible system of means and obstacles takes the place of the goal. In this system even a monomaniac does not
I 496 • T H E M A N W I T H 0 U T QU A L I T I E S
live monotonously but constantly has new things to do, and even who- ever could not live at all in the content of his life-a case that is more frequent today than one thinks: for example, a professor at an agricul- tural college who has set the management of stall wastes and dung on new paths-lives for this content without complaint, and enjoys listen- ing to music or other such experiences, ifhe is a capable person, always, as it were, in honor of managing stables. This doing something else "in honor of something" is, moreover, somewhat further removed from the "something" than from the "for" and consequently is the method most frequently applied, because it is as it were the cheapest, ofdoing in the name of an ideal all those things that cannot be reconciled with it.
For the advantage of all "for" and "in honor of" consists in the fact that through serving the ideal, everything which the ideal itself excludes is again brought to life. The classic example of this was furnished by the traveling knights of chivalric love, who fell like mad dogs upon every equal they encountered in honor of a condition in their heart that was as soft and fragrant as dripping church wax. But the present, too, is not lacking in small peculiarities ofthis kind. Thus, for example, it organizes luxurious festivals for the alleviation ofpoverty. Or the large number of strict people who insist on the carrying out of public principles from which they know themselves exempt. Then, too, the hypocritical admis- sion that the end justifies the means belongs here, for in reality it is the always active and colorful means for whose sake one usually puts up with ends that are moral and insipid. And no matter how playful such exam- ples Iflay appear, this objection falls silent before the disturbing observa- tion that civilized life doubtless has a tendency toward the most violent outbursts, and that these are never more violent than when they take place in honor of great and sacred, indeed even of tender, emotions! Are they then felt to be excused? Or is the relationship not rather the opposite?
Thus, by many interrelated paths, one arrives at the conclusion that people are not good, beautiful, and truthful, but rather would like to be, and one has a sense ofhow the serious problem ofwhy this is so is veiled by the illuminating pretense that the ideal is, by its very nature, unattain- able. This was more or less what Ulrich said, without sparing attacks on Lindner and what he stood for. Right thinking that was the effortless result of this. It was certain, he maintained, that Lindner was ten times more convinced oftwo-times-two or the rules ofmorality than he was of his God, but by working for his conviction about God, he largely evaded this difficulty. For this purpose he put himself into the condition of be- lief, an attitude in which what he wanted to be convinced ofwas so inge-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1497
niously combined with what he could be convinced of that he himself was no longer able to separate them-
Here Agathe noted that all acting is questionable. She reminded her- self of the paradoxical assertion that the only people who remain real and good in their hearts are those who do not do many good deeds. This now seemed to her extended, and thus confirmed, by the agreeable pos- sibility that the condition of activity was fundamentally the adulteration of another condition, from which it arose and which it pretended to serve.
Ulrich affirmed this once more. 'We have on the one side," he re- peated by way of summary, "people who live for and, without taking the word too literally, in something, who are constantly on the move, who strive, weave, till, sow, and harvest, in a word the idealists, for all these idealists of today are really livingfor their ideals. And on the other side are those who would like to live in some fashion in their gods, but for these there is not even a name--"
"What is this 'in'? " Agathe asked emphatically.
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders and then gave a few indications. "One could relate 'for' and 'in' to what has been called experiencing in a con- vex and experiencing in a concave way. Perhaps the psychoanalytic leg- end that the human soul strives to get back to the tender protection of the intrauterine condition before birth is a misunderstanding of the 'in,' perhaps not. Perhaps 'in' is the presumed descent of all life from God. But perhaps the explanation is also simply to be found in psychology; for every affect bears within it the claim of totality to rule alone and, as it were, form the 'in' in which everything else is immersed; but no affect can maintain itself as primary for long without by that very fact chang- ing, and thus it absolutely yearns for opposing affects in order to renew itself through them, which is pretty much an image of our indispensable 'for'- Enough! One thing is certain: that all sociable life arises from the 'for' and unites mankind in the aim of apparently living for something; mankind mercilessly defends these aims; what we see today by way of political developments are all attempts to put other 'for's in place of the lost community of religion. The living 'for something' of the individual person has lagged behind with the paterfamilias and the age of Goethe. The middle-class religion of the future will perhaps be satisfled with bringing the masses together in a belief that might have no content at all but in which the feeling of beingfor it together will be that much more powerful-"
There was no doubt that Ulrich was evading a decision (about the question), for what did Agathe care about political development!
ON AGATHE
Agathe at Lindner's
During this entire time Agathe was continuing her visits to Lindner. This made extravagant claims on his Account for Unforeseen Loss of Time, and all too often this overdraft meant a reduction in all his other activities. Moreover, empathy for this young woman also demanded a
great deal of time when she was not there:
Thus Lindner had found a soul, but deep tones of discontent were
intermingled with it and kept him in a state of constant irritation. Agathe had simply ignored his forbidding her to visit.
"Does my visiting embarrass you? " she asked the first time she
showed up again.
"And what does your brother say to this? " Lindner replied earnestly
every time.
"I haven't told him anything about it," Agathe confided in him, "be-
cause it might be that he wouldn't like it. You've made me anxious. "
Of course one cannot withhold a helping hand from a person seeking
help.
But every time they made an appointment Agathe was late. It was no
use telling her that unpunctuality was the same as breaking a contract or as lack ofconscience. "It indicates that the rest ofthe time, too, your will is in a slumbering state, and that you're dreamily giving yourself up to things that turn up by chance, instead of breaking away at the right time with collected and focused energy! " Lindner conjectured severely.
"Ifonly it were dreamily! " Agathe replied.
But Lindner declared sharply: "Such a lack of self-control makes one suspect every other kind of undependabilityl"
"Apparently. I suspect that too," was Agathe's response. "Don't you have any will? "
"No. "
"You're a fantasist and have no discipline! "
"Yes. " And after a short pause she added, smiling: "My brother says that I'm a person of fragments; that's lovely, isn't it? Even if it's not clear what it means. One might think of an unfinished volume of unfinished poems. "
Lindner was resentfully silent.
"My husband, on the other hand, is now impolitely asserting that I'm pathological, a neuropath or something like that," Agathe went on.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1499
And thereupon Lindner exclaimed sarcastically: "You don't say! How pleased people are today when moral tasks can apparently be reduced to medical ones! But I can't make things that comfortable for you! "
The only pedagogical success that Lindner was able to achieve he owed to the principle that five minutes before the end of each visit, which was always set and agreed upon beforehand, without regard to its delayed start and however much the conversation might absorb him, he began to fall silent and gave Agathe to understand that he now needed to devote his time to other obligations. Agathe not only greeted this rude- ness with smiles; she was grateful for it. For such minutes of the conver- sation, framed on at least one side as if by a metal edge and ticking sharply, also imparted to the remainder of the day something of their incisiveness. After the extravagant conversations with Ulrich, this had the effect ofleanness or tightly belted straps.
But when she once said this to Lindner, thinking to be nice to him, it immediately made him miss a quarter of an hour, and the next day he was quite indignant with himself.
In these circumstances he was a strict teacher for Agathe.
But Agathe was an odd pupil. This man, who wanted to do something to help her, although most recently he was having difficulties himself, still gave her confidence and even consolation whenever she was on the point of despairing of making any progress with Ulrich. She then sought Lindner out, and not only because, for whatever external reasons, he was Ulrich's adversary, but also and even more because he revealed as clearly as he did involuntarily the jealousy that came over him at the mere mention of Ulrich's name. It was obviously not personal rivalry, for Agathe was aware that the two men hardly knew each other, but rather a rivalry between intellectual species, the way species of animals have their particular enemies, whom they already recognize when they meet them for the first time and whose slightest approach makes them agi- tated. And remarkably, she could understand Lindner; for something that might be called jealousy was also among her feelings toward Ulrich, a not being able to keep up, or an offended fatigue, perhaps too, simply put, a feminine jealousy of his masculine pleasure in ideas, and this made her happy to listen, shivering with pleasure, whenever Lindner contested some opinion or other that could be Ulrich's, and this he espe- cially loved to do. She could go along with this the more safely in that she felt closer to Lindner's level than to her brother's, for however militant Lindner appeared, indeed even though he might intimidate her, there always remained working within her a secret mistrust, which was really I sometimes of the kind that women feel against the endeavors of other women.
1500 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Agathe still felt her heart beating whenever she sat alone for a mo- ment in Lindner's surroundings, as if she were exposed to the rising of vapors that enchanted her mind. The temptation, the unease she felt at making herself feel at ease, the illusive possibility that it might happen, always evoked in her the story ofan abducted girl who, educated among strangers, changed places as it were within herself and became a differ- ent woman: this was one of the stories that, reaching back to her child- hood and without being especially important to her, had sometimes played a role in the temptations of her life and their excuses. But Ulrich had given her a particular interpretation of these stories, from which otherwise it would be easy to deduce merely a deficient spiritual consti- tution, and she believed more passionately in his interpretation than he did himself. For in the length and breadth of time, God has created more than this one life that we happen to be leading; it is in no way the true one, it is one of His many hopefully systematic experiments, into which He has placed no compulsion of necessity for those of us who are not blinded by the light of the passing moment, and Ulrich, talking this way about God and the imperfection of the world and the aimless, meaningless facticity ofits course, stripping away its false order to reveal the true vision of God that represented the most promising approach to Him, also taught her the meaning of the tentative claim of this way of understanding how one could, in a shadowy figuration alongside oneself, also be another.
So as she attentively observed Lindner's walls, which were equipped (hung) with pictures ofdivine subjects, Agathe felt that Ulrich was hov- ering in the vicinity. It occurred to her that she found Raphael, Murillo, and Bernini in individual engravings on the walls, but not Titian, and nothing at all from the Gothic period; on the other hand, there predomi- nated in many of the pictures present-day imitations of that style ala Jesuit Baroque that had sucked up vast quantities of sugar like a puffy omelet. If one followed only these pictures around the walls, the piling up of billowing robes and vacant, uplifted oval faces and sweetish naked bodies was disquieting. Agathe said: There is so much soul in them that the total effect is of a monstrous despiritualization. And look: the heav- enward gaze has become such a convention that all the irrepressible human vitality has taken refuge in the less prominent details and hidden itself there. Don't you find these garment. hems, shoes, leg positions, arms, robe folds, and clouds loaded down by all the sexuality that isn't openly recognized? This isn't too far removed from fetishism!
Well, Agathe ought to know about this phenomenon of being loaded down. This yearningly leaning out from a balcony into the void. Or it's really the other way around: an infinite pressing inward. With horror,
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 5 0 1
one could see it right here on the borderline between pathological crotchet and exaltation.
Lindner had no inkling of this. But the reproach dismayed him, and he first tried speaking of this beauty in a belittling way. The artist must make use of the material and the fleshly, and clings to it; this leads to a lower order ofart. Agathe overestimated it. Art might well propagate the great experiences of mankind but could not turn them into experience.
Agathe then angrily accused him of having too many such pictures. The freedoms that, according to what he said, had to be conceded to the lower humanity in the artist still seemed by that measure to have some meaning even for him. -What? Agathe asked.
Cornered, Lindner gave his views on art. True art is spiritualization of matter. It can represent nakedness only when the superiority of soul over matter speaks from the representation.
Agathe objected that he was mistaken, for it was the superiority not of soul that was speaking, but of convention.
Suddenly he burst out: Or did she think that could justify to a serious person painters' and sculptors' cult of nakedness? - I s the naked human really such a beautiful thing? Something so scandalous! Aren't the trans- ports ofaesthetes simply ridiculous, even ifone doesn't even try to apply serious moral concepts (to them)?
Agathe: - T h e naked body is beautiful! . . . This was a lie, for heaven's sake, whose only purpose was to enrage her partner. Agathe had never paid any attention to the beauty of male bodies; women today regard a man's body for the most part only as an armature to support the head. Men are accustomed to pay somewhat more attention to beauty. But let one gather all the naked bodies with which our museums and exhibitions are filled and put them in a single place, and then seek out from among this confusion of white maggots those that are truly beautiful. The first thing one would notice is that the naked body is usually merely naked: naked like a face that for decades has worn a beard and is suddenly shaven. But beautiful? That the world stops in its tracks whenever a truly beautiful person appears reveals beauty to be a mystery; because beauty-love and love are a mystery, it is true for the whole. Likewise that the concept of beauty has been lost (assembly-line art). So she sits there, and Ulrich speaks through her mouth.
But Lindner immediately jumps at the challenge. -Well! he ex- claimed. -Oh, of course, the modem cult of the body! It excites the imagination in just one direction and inflames it with claims that life can't fulfill! Even the exaggerated concern with physical culture that the Americans have wished on us is a great danger!
-Y ou're seeing ghosts, Agathe said indifferently.
1502 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Lindner to this: -Many pure women, who welcome and participate in such things without a deeper lmowledge of life, don't consider that in doing so they are conjuring up spirits that might perhaps destroy their own lives and the lives of those closest to them!
Agathe retorted sharply: -Should one bathe only once every two weeks? Bite off one's nails? Wear flannel and smell of chilblain oint- ment? . . . It was an attack on these surroundings, but at the same time she felt imprisoned and ridiculously punished for having to argue over such platitudes.
Their conversations often took the form of Agathe's mocking and irri- tating him so that he would lose his temper and ''bark. " This was how she was acting now, and Lindner took on the adversary.
- A truly manly soul will regard not only the plastic arts but also the whole institution of the theater with the greatest reservation, and calmly suffer the scorn and mockery of those who are too effeminate to rigor- ously forbid themselves every tickling of the senses! he asserted, imme- diately adding novels with the remark that most novels, too, unmistakably breathe the sensual enslavement and overstimulation of their authors and stimulate the reader's lower aspects precisely through the poetic illusion with which they gloss over and cover up everything!
He seemed to assume that Agathe despised him for being inartistic, and was anxious to show his superiority. "It is after all dogma," he ex- claimed, "that one must have heard and seen everything in order to be able to talk about it! But how much better it would be if one would be proud of one's lack of culture and let others prattle! One shouldn't con- vince oneself that it's part of culture to look at filth under electric light. "
Agathe looked at him, smiling, without answering. His observations were so dismally obtuse that her eyes misted over. This moist, mocking glance left him uncertain.
1484 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
had lasted longer, the priests, too, would have got swords just as long, as the university professors had got them after the finance authorities and the postal officials, and if a world upheaval with entirely different views had not intervened, the sword would perhaps have developed in Ka- kania into a spiritual weapon.
When the conversation had proceeded to this point, partly in an ex- change of views, partly in the reminiscences that were their silent ac- companiment, General Stumm put in: "That, by the way, is something Leinsdorf said already, that the priests really must receive their swords at the next concordat, as a sign that they, too, are performing a function in the state. He then hedged this with the less paradoxical remark that even small daggers might suffice, with mother-of-pearl and a gold han- dle, of the kind officials used to wear. "
"Are you serious? ''
"He was," the General replied. "He pointed out to me that in Bohe- mia during the Thirty Years' War priests rode around in mass-robes of gilt that were leather below-in other words, proper mass-dragoons. He is simply exasperated at the general hostility directed against the state, and recalled that in one of his castle chapels he still has such a garment preserved. Look, you know how he's always talking about the constitu- tion of '61 having given capital and culture the lead here, and that this has led to a big disappointment-"
"How did you actually happen to meet Leinsdorf? " Ulrich inter- rupted him with a smile.
"Oh, that came about when he was on his way back from one of his estates in Bohemia," Stumm said, without going into greater detail. "Moreover, he has asked you to come see him three times, and you haven't gone. In B. on the way back, his car blundered into the riots and was stopped. On one side of the street stood the Czechs, shouting: 'Down with the Germans! ' on the other side the Germans shouted: 'Down with the Czechs! ' But when they recognized him they stopped that and asked in chorus in both German and Czech: 'What's going on with the Commission to Ascertain the Desires of the Concerned Sec- tions of the Population, Count? ' and some screamed 'Phooey! ' at him and others 'Shame! ' This stupid Resolution, that one should let oneself be killed for one's own ideas but not other people's, appears to have spread by word of mouth, and because we suppressed it we're now sus- pected of wanting to be the murderer of nationalities! That's why Leins- dorf said to me: 'You're his friend; why doesn't he come when I call him? ' And all I could do was offer: 'Ifyou wish to entrust me with some- thing, I will inform him! ' "
Stumm paused.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1485
"And what . . . ? " Ulrich asked.
"Well, you know it's never really easy to understand what he means. First he talked to me about the French Revolution. As is well known, the French Revolution lopped off the heads of many of the nobility, and astonishingly he finds that quite proper, although stones had almost been thrown at him in B. For he says that the ancien regime had its mistakes, and the French Revolution its true ideas. But what ultimately resulted from all the effort? That's what he was asking himself. And then he said the following: Today, for example, the mail is better and quicker; but earlier, while the mail was slow, people wrote better letters. Or: Today clothing is more practical and less ridiculous; but earlier, when it was like a masquerade, far better materials were used. And he concedes that for longer trips he himself uses an automobile because it's faster and more comfortable than a horse-drawn coach, but he maintains that this box with springs on four wheels has deprived traveling of its true nobil- ity. All that's funny, I think, but it's true. Didn't you yourself once say that as mankind progresses one leg always slides backward whenever the other slides forward? Involuntarily, each of us today has something against progress. And Leinsdorf said to me: 'General, earlier our young people spoke of horses and dogs, but today the sons of factory owners talk of horsepower and chassis. So since the constitution of '61, liberal- ism has shoved the nobility aside, but everything is full of new corrup- tion, and if against expectations the social revolution should ever happen, it will lop the heads off the sons of factory owners, but things won't get any better either! ' Isn't that something? You get the impres- sion that something is boiling over in him. With someone else, one might perhaps think that he doesn't know what he wants! "
But in the meantime we've only got as far as the national revolution?
"Do you know what he wants? " Ulrich asked.
"After the business in B. , Drangsal tried to have him informed that now one would really have to let oneself be unconditionally swept up in the Ideal of Man, and Feuermaul is supposed to have expressed himself to the effect that it's better as an Austrian not to master the resistance of the nationalities than it is as a German to transform one's country into a field for army maneuvers. To this Leinsdorf's only response was that that wasn't realpolitik. He wants a proclamation of power; which is to say, of course it should also be a proclamation of love; that, after all, had been the original idea of the Parallel Campaign. W e must, General'-
1486 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
these were his words-'proclaim our unity; that is less contradictory than it seems, but also not as easy! ' "
Hearing this, Ulrich forgot himself and gave a rather more serious re- sponse. "Tell me," he asked, "doesn't all the talk about the Parallel Cam- paign ever seem rather childish to you? "
Stumm looked at him with astonishment. "Well, yes," he replied hesi- tantly. "When I'm talking this way with you, or with Leinsdorf, it does sometimes seem to me that I'm talking like an adolescent, or that you're philosophizing about the immortality of cockchafers; but doesn't that come with the subject? Where it's a question of sublime missions, one never has the feeling of being able I allowed to talk the way one really is.
Agathe laughed.
Stumm laughed along with her. ''I'm laughing too, dear lady! " he af- firmed in a worldly-wise way, but then seriousness returned to his face and he went on: "But strictly speaking, what the Count means is by no means so wrong. For instance, what do you understand by liberalism? " With these words he again turned to Ulrich, but without waiting for a reply he went on again: "What I mean is that people ought to be left to themselves. And it will also have struck you that that's now going out of fashion. It's given rise to a lot ofnonsense. But is that all it is? It seems to me people want something more. They aren't content with themselves. I'm not either; I used to be an amiable person. You didn't really do any- thing, but you were satisfied with yourself. Work wasn't bad, and after work you played cards or went hunting, and there was in all of that a certain kind of culture. A certain wholeness. Doesn't it seem so to you too? And why isn't it like that anymore today? As far as I can judge from myself, I believe that people feel too clever. Ifyou want to eat a schnit- zel, it occurs to you that there are people without one. If someone is after a pretty girl, it suddenly goes through his mind that he really ought to be thinking about settling some conflict or other. That's this insuffer- able intellectualism that you can't ever shake off today, and that's why there's no going forward anywhere. And without knowing it themselves, people again want something. That means they no longer want a compli- cated intellect, they don't want a thousand possibilities for living; they want to be satisfied with what they're doing anyway, and for this all they need is to get back some belief or conviction or-well, how to describe what they need to do that? I'd like to hear your opinion about all this! "
But that was only self-satisfaction on the part of the animated and ex- cited Stumm, for before Ulrich could even pull a face, he sprang his surprise: "Of course one can just as well call it belief as conviction, but I've thought a lot about it and prefer to call it single-mindedness! "
Stumm paused, with the idea of garnering applause before he un-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1487
veiled further insights into the workshop of his mind, and then there mingled with the weighty expression on his face another, which was as superior as it was tired of enjoyment. "We used to talk a lot about the problems of order," he reminded his friend, "and so we don't have to stop over them today. So order is to a certain extent a paradoxical notion. Every decent person has a yearning for internal and external order, but on the other hand, you can't bear too much ofit; indeed, a perfect order would be, so to speak, the ruination ofall progress and pleasure. That is (already) inherent, as it were, in the concept oforder. And so you have to ask yourself: what is order after all? And how does it happen that we imagine we're not able to exist without it? And what kind of order is it that we're looking for? A logical, a practical, an individual, a general order, an order of the emotions, of the mind, or of actions? De facto, there's a heap oforders all mixed up: taxes and customs duties are one, religion another, military regulations a third; there's no end of searching them out and enumerating them. I've been preoccupied with this, as you know, and I don't believe that there are many generals in the world who take their profession as seriously as I've had to do this past year. I've helped after my fashion in the search for an encompassing idea, but you yourself ended up proclaiming that to order the spirit one would need an entire global secretariat, and even you'll have to admit that we can't wait for such an ordering. But on the other hand, one can't use that to let everyone do whatever he wants! "
Stumm leaned back and drew breath. The most difficult part had now been said, and he felt the need to excuse himself to Agathe for the gloomy dryness ofhis behavior, which he did with the words: "You must excuse me, but your brother and I had an old and difficult account to settle; but from now on it will also be more suitable for ladies, for I'm again back to where I was, that people don't have any use for compli- cated intellect, but would like to believe and be convinced. For if you analyze this, you'll find that the least important thing about the order to which man aspires is whether reason will approve of it or not; there are also totally ungrounded kinds of orders: for instance, the one that's al- ways asserted in the military about one's superior always being right, meaning, o f course, so long as his superior isn't around. How I puzzled over this as a desecration of the world of ideas when I was a young offi- cer! And what do I see today? Today it's called the principle of the leader-"
''Where did you get that? '' Ulrich asked, interrupting the lecture, for he had the distinct suspicion that these ideas were not just taken from a conversation with Leinsdorf.
"Everyone Wl'. 'lts strong leadership! And partly from Nietzsche, of
1488 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
course, and his interpreters," Stumm replied nimbly and learnedly. "What's already being called for is a double philosophy and morality: for leader and for led! But as long as we're talking about the military, I must say that the military excels not only in and for itself, as an element of order, but also in always making itself available when all other order fails! "
"The decisive things are happening above and beyond reason, and the greatness of life is rooted in the irrational! " Ulrich brought up, imitating his cousin Diotima from memory.
The General grasped this immediately but did not take offense. "Yes, that's the way she used to talk, your cousin, before she started investigat- ing the proclamations of love in, as it were, too great detail. " With this explanation he turned to Agathe.
Agathe was silent, but smiled.
Stumm again turned to Ulrich. "I don't know whether Leinsdorfhas perhaps said it to you too; at any rate, it's marvelously right: he maintains that the most important thing about a belief is that one always believe the same thing. That's something like what I'm calling single-minded- ness. 'But can civilians do that? ' I asked him. 'No,' I said. 'Civilians wear different suits every year, and every few years there are parliamentary elections so they can choose differently every time; the spirit of single- mindedness is much rather to be found in the military! ' "
"So you convinced Leinsdorf that a strengthened militarism is the true fulfillment of his aims? "
"God forbid, I didn't say a word! We merely agreed that in the future we would do without Feuermaul because his views are too unusable. And for the rest, Leinsdorf has given me a whole series of assignments for you-"
"That's superfluous! "
"You should quickly get him access to socialist circles-"
"My gardener's son is a zealous member of the party-that I can do! " "That's just fine! He's only doing it out of conscientiousness, because
he once got the idea in his head. The second thing is that you should go see him as soon as possible-"
"But I'm leaving in a few days! "
"Then as soon as you get back-"
"It doesn't look as if I'm ever coming back! "
Stumm von Bordwehr looked at Agathe; Agathe smiled, which en-
couraged him. "Crazy? " he asked.
Agathe shrugged her shoulders indecisively.
"Well, let me summarize once more-'' Stumm said.
"Our friend has had enough philosophy! " Ulrich interrupted him.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1489
"You certainly can't say that about me! " Stumm angrily defended himself. "It's just that we can't wait for philosophy. And I don't want to lie to you: ofcourse whenever I visit LeinsdorfI have orders to influence him in a certain way if it's possible, that you can imagine. And when he says that the most important thing about a belief is that one always be- lieve the same thing, he's thinking above all of religion; but I'm already thinking of single-mindedness, for that's more comprehensive. I don't hesitate to assert that a truly powerful philosophy of life can't wait around for reason; on the contrary, a true philosophy of life must be absolutely directed against reason, otherwise it would not get into the position of being able to force its submission. And the civilian world seeks such a single-mindedness in constant change, but the military has, so to speak, an enduring single-mindedness! Madame," Stumm inter- rupted his ardor, "you should not believe that I'm a militarist; quite the contrary, the military has always been even a little on the raw side for my taste: but the way the logic ofthese ideas grabs hold ofyou is like playing with a large dog: first he bites for fun, and then he gets carried away and goes wild. And I would like to grant your brother, as it were, one last opportunity-"
"And how do you connect that with the proclamation of power and love? " Ulrich asked.
"God, in the meantime I've forgotten," Stumm replied. "But of course these eruptions ofnationalism that we're now experiencing in our fatherland are somehow eruptions of the energy of an unhappy love. And also in this area, in the synthesis ofpower and love, the military is, in a certain sense, exemplary. A person has to have some kind of love for his fatherland, and ifhe doesn't have it for his fatherland, then he has it for something else. So you just need to grab hold of that something else. As an example that just occurs to me, take the term conscript-volunteer. Who would ever think that a conscript is a volunteer? That's the last thing he is. And yet he was and is, according to the sense of the law. In some such sense people have to be made volunteers again! "
ON THE YOUNG SOCIALIST SCHMEISSER
Conversations with Schmeisser
It was not the first time that Count Leinsdorf had expressed the opinion that a practitioner of realpolitik had to make use even of socialism in its search for allies against progress as well as nationalism, for he had re- peatedly begged Ulrich to cultivate this connection, since out of political considerations he did not just now wish to be caught doing it himself. He advised starting by approaching not the leaders but the young up-and- comers, those who were not completely corrupted and whose vitality permitted the hope that through them one might acquire a patriotically rejuvenating influence over the party. Then Ulrich remembered cheer- fully that there lived in his house a young man who never greeted him but looked away disdainfully whenever they met, which happened rarely enough. This was Schmeisser, a doctoral student in technical sciences; his father was a gardener, who had already been living on the property when Ulrich took it over and who had since, in exchange for free lodging and occasional gifts, kept the small old grounds in order partly with his own hands and partly by indicating and supervising any work that be- came necessary. Ulrich appreciated the fact that this young man, who lived with his father and earned the money for his studies by tutoring and doing a little writing, regarded him as one of the idle rich, who was to be treated with contempt; the experiment of inaction to which he was subject sometimes made him regard himself in this fashion, and he found pleasure in challenging his faultfinder when, one day, he stopped to talk with Schmeisser. It turned out that the student, who, moreover, seen from closer up, might already be twenty-six years old, had also been waiting for this moment, and immediately discharged the tension of the encounter in violent attacks, which ended between an attempt at con- version and the proffering of personal contempt. Ulrich told him about the Parallel Campaign, and thought he was doing the right thing by mak- ing his assignment out to be as ridiculous as it was while at the same time indicating the advantages a determined person might be able to draw from it. He was expecting Schmeisser to fall in with this scheme, which then with God's help might develop in rather strange directions; this
•schmeisser (the name means "flinger" or "hurler. . ) is the left-wing counterpart to the proto-Fascistic Hans Sepp. Peter Lindner seems to represent apolitical, amoral youth. - TRANs.
0
From the Posthumous Papers · 1491
young man, however, was no bourgeois romantic and adventurer, but listened with a crafty look around the mouth until Ulrich ran out of things to say. His chest was narrow between broad-boned shoulders, and he wore thick glasses. These really thick glasses were the beautiful part of his face, which had a sallow, fatty, blotchy skin; these thick glasses, made necessary by hard nights over his books and assignments and made stronger by poverty, which had not permitted him to consult a doctor at the first sign that he needed them, had become for Schmeisser's simple emotions an image ofself-liberation: when he spied them in the mirror, shining over his pimpled countenance with its sad- dle nose and sharp proletarian cheeks, it seemed to him like Poverty crowned by Intellect, and this had happened especially often since, against his will, he had come to admire Agathe from afar. Since then he had also hated Ulrich, to whom he had previously paid scant attention, for his athletic build, and Ulrich now read his damnation in these glasses and had the impression ofchattering away like a child playing in front of the barrels of two cannons. When he had finished, Schmeisser answered him with lips that could barely separate themselves for satisfaction at what they were saying: "The party has no need ofsuch adventures; we'll arrive at the goal in our own way! "
That was really giving it to the bourgeois!
After this rebuffit was hard for Ulrich to find more to say, but he went straight at his attacker and finally said with a laugh: "If I were the person you take me for, you ought to pour poison in my water pipes, or saw down the trees under which I stroll: why don't you want to do something of that sort in a case where it might really be called for? "
"You have no idea what politics is all about," Schmeisser retorted, "for you are a social-romantic member of the middle class, at most an indi- vidual anarchist! Serious revolutionaries aren't interested in bloody revolutions! "
After that, Ulrich often had briefconversations with this revolutionary who didn't want to start revolutions. "I already knew when I was a cav- alry lieutenant," he told him, "that in the short or long run mankind is going to be organized according to socialist principles in some form; it is, as it were, the final chance that God has left to it. For the fact that mil- lions of people are oppressed in the most brutal way, in order for thou- sands of others to fail to do anything worthwhile with the power that derives from this oppression, is not only unjust and criminal but also stu- pid, inappropriate, and suicidal! "
Schmeisser responded sarcastically: "But you've always settled for knowing that! Haven't you? There's the bourgeois intellectual for you! You've spoken to me a few times about a bank director who's a friend of
1492 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
yours: I assure you, this bank director is my enemy, I'll fight him, I'll show him that his convictions are only pretexts for his profits; but at least he has convictions! He says yes where I say no! But you? In you every- thing has already dissolved, in you the bourgeois lie has already begun to decompose! "
Ulrich objected peaceably: "It may be that my way ofthinking is bour- geois in origin; to some extent it's even probable. But: Inter faeces et urinam nascimur-why not our opinions as well? What does that prove against their correctness? "
Every time Ulrich spoke this way, reasoning politely, Schmeisser could not contain himself and exploded anew. "Everything you're saying springs from the moral corruption of bourgeois society! " he would then proclaim, or something similar, for there was nothing he hated more than that form ofgoodness opposed to reason which is found in amiabil- ity; indeed, all form, even that of beauty, was for him an object of suspi- cion. For this reason he never accepted even one of Ulrich's invitations, but at most let himself be treated to tea and cigarettes, as if in Russian novels. Ulrich loved to provoke him, although these conversations were completely meaningless. Since the year of liberation in '48 and the founding of the German Empire, events that only a minority now per- sonally remembered, politics probably seemed to the majority of edu- cated people more an atavism than an important subject. There was next to no sign that behind these external processes that plodded along out of habit, intellectual processes were already preparing for that deforma- tion, for that propensity for decline, and for the suicidal willingness aris- ing from self-loathing, which undermine a state of affairs and apparently always form the passive precondition to periods of violent political change. Thus his whole life long Ulrich, too, had been accustomed to expect that politics would bring about not what needed to happen but at best what ought to have happened long since.
The image it presented to him was mostly that of criminal neglect. The social question too, which formed the whole of Schmeisser's universe, appeared to him not as a question but merely as an omitted answer, though he could list a hun- dred other such "questions" on which the mental files had been closed and which, as one might say, were waiting in vain for manipulative treat- ment in the Office of Dispatch. And when he did that, and Schmeisser was in a gentle mood, the latter said: "Just let us first come to power! "
But then Ulrich said: "You're too kind to me, for what I'm asserting isn't true at all. Almost all intellectual people have this prejudice that the practical questions they understand nothing about would be easy to solve, but when they try, of course it turns out that they just haven't thought of everything. On the other hand-here I agree with you-if
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1493
the politician were to think of everything, he would never get around to acting. Perhaps that's why politics contains as much ofthe wealth ofreal- ity as of the poverty of spirit (lack of ideas)-"
This gave Schmeisser the opportunity for a jubilant interruption, with the words: "People like you never get around to acting because they don't want the truth! The bourgeois so-called mind is in all its works only a procrastination and an excuse! "
"But why don't people like me want? " Ulrich asked. "Why couldn't they want? Wealth, for example, is certainly not what they really desire. I hardly know a prosperous man who doesn't have a small weakness for it, myself included, but I also don't know a single one who loves money for its own sake, except for misers, and greed is a disturbance of personal conduct which is also found in love, in power, and in honor: the patho- logical nature of greed really proves that giving is more blessed than re- ceiving. By the way, do you believe that giving is more blessed than receiving? " he asked.
"You can raise that question in some aesthete's salon! " was Schmeisser's response.
"But I fear," Ulrich maintained, "that all your efforts will remain pointless as long as you don't know whether giving or receiving is more blessed or how they complement each other! "
Schmeisser crowed: "You no doubt intend to talk mankind into being good? Besides, in the socially organized state, the proper relationship of giving and receiving will be a foregone conclusion! "
"Then I will maintain"-Ulrich completed his sentence with a smile-"that you will just come to grief on something else, for instance that we are capable ofcursing someone as a dog even when we love our dog more than our fellowmen! "
A mirror calmed Schmeisser by showing him the image of a young man wearing thick glasses under a stubborn forehead. He gave no answer.
Ulrich had picked out this young man for the General and proposed that they go with the General to visit Meingast, for Schmeisser knew about this prophet, and even ifhe was a false one, still it was nothing new for Schmeisser to visit the gatherings of opponents; but Ulrich had cor- rectly guessed about his friend Stumm that at various times he was se- cretly gathering impressions from Clarisse, and through her had also made the acquaintance ofthe Master, who had made no small impres- sion. But when Ulrich told Agathe about his plan, she didn't want to hear about it.
1494 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Ulrich began to jest. - 1 bet that this Schmeisser is really in love with you-he maintained-and it's no secret that Lindner is. Both are for- men. Meingast, too, is afor-man. You'll end up winning him over too.
Agathe naturally wanted to knowwhatfor-men were.
-Lindner is a good person, isn't he? Ulrich asked.
Agathe confinned it, although for a long time she had not been as
enthusiastic on this count as she had been at the beginning.
-But he lives morefor religion than in a religious state?
Agathe didn't contest this at all.
- T h a t ' s j u s t w h a t a f o r - m a n is, U l r i c h e x p l a i n e d . - T h e e x t e n s i v e a c -
tivity he bestows upon his faith is perhaps the most important example, but it's just one example of the technique that's always used to make ideals tenable and available for everyday use. So he explained to her in detail his spontaneously invented notion oflivingfor and in something.
Human life appears to be just long enough so that in it, if one livesfor something, one can accomplish the trajectory from neophyte to Nestor, patriarch, or pioneer; and in doing so it matters less for human satisfac- tion what one lives for than that one can livefor something: a Nestor of the German brandy trade and the pioneer of a new worldview enjoy, besides similar honors, the same advantage, which consists in the fact that life, despite its fearful wealth, contains not a single problem that would not be simplified by being brought into contact with a worldview, but would be simplified just as much by being brought into contact with the production of brandy. Such an advantage is precisely what one calls, using a fairly recent term, rationalization, except that what is rational- ized is not skilled actions but ideas, and who today would not already be able to survey what that implies? Even in the slightest case this life for something is comparable to owning a notebook in which everything is entered and things that have been disposed of are neatly crossed out. Whoever does not do this lives in a disorderly fashion, never finishes things, and is bothered by their comings and goings; whoever, on the other hand, has a notebook resembles the thrifty paterfamilias who saves every nail, every piece of rubber, every scrap of material, because he knows that someday such a stock will come in handy in his household economy. But this solid, civicfor something, as it was handed down from one's father's generation as the height ofworthy endeavor, often too as a hobbyhorse or a secret detail one always keeps one's eye on, represented at that time something which was already somewhat old-fashioned; for a propensity for the broad scale, a yen for developing the living-for-some- thing in mighty associations, had already replaced it.
By this means what Ulrich had begun in jest took on, as he uttered it, more serious significance. The distinction he had hit upon tempted him
From the Posthumous Papers · 1495
with its inexhaustible prospects, and became for him at this moment one of those views that make the world fall asunder like a split apple under the knife, exposing what lies within. Agathe objected that one also often says that a person is completely subsumed by something, or lives and breathes it, although it was certain that according to Ulrich's nomencla- ture such ardent livers and breathers were doing it for whatever their affair might be; and Ulrich conceded that it would be more precise to proceed by distinguishing between the notions of"flnding oneselfin the state ofone's ideal" and "flnding oneselfin the state ofworking for one's ideal," but in which the second "in" was either unreal and in truth a "for," or the claimed relationship to working/or it would have to be an unusual and ecstatic one. Language, moreover, has its good reasons not to be so precise about this, since livingfor something is the condition of worldly existence, in, on the contrary, always that which one imagines and pretends to live, and the relation ofthese two states to each other is extremely refractory. People, after all, do secretly know, without, of course, being able to admit it, ofthe miraculous fact that everything "ifs worth living for" would be unreal if not actually absurd the moment one bied to immerse oneself in it completely. Love would never again arise from its lair; in politics, the slightest proofofsincerity would necessarily lead to the mortal destruction of one's opponent; the artist would spurn all contact with less perfect beings, and morality would have to consist not of perforated prescriptions but of taking one back to that childlike condition of love of the good and abhorrence of the bad which takes everything literally. For whoever really abhors crime would not flnd it too little to hire trained professional devils to torture prisoners as in old paintings of hellfue, and whoever loves virtue with his whole life ought to eat nothing but goodness until his stomach rises into his throat. What's remarkable is that at times things really do go that far, but that such periods of Inquisition or its opposite, gushing over the goodness of man, are in bad odor I bad memories I remain memories.
That is why it is simply to preserve life that mankind has succeeded in inventing, in place of"what it's worth living for," livingfor it or, in other words, putting its idealism in place of its ideal condition. It is a living before something; now, instead ofliving, one "sbives" and is henceforth a being that with all its energies presses on just as much toward fulfill- ment as it is exonerated from arriving at it. "Living for something" is the permanent principle of the "in. " All desires, and not just love, are sad after they are fulfllled; but in the moment in which the activityfor the desire fully takes the place of the desire, it is canceled out in an inge- nious way, for now the inexhaustible system of means and obstacles takes the place of the goal. In this system even a monomaniac does not
I 496 • T H E M A N W I T H 0 U T QU A L I T I E S
live monotonously but constantly has new things to do, and even who- ever could not live at all in the content of his life-a case that is more frequent today than one thinks: for example, a professor at an agricul- tural college who has set the management of stall wastes and dung on new paths-lives for this content without complaint, and enjoys listen- ing to music or other such experiences, ifhe is a capable person, always, as it were, in honor of managing stables. This doing something else "in honor of something" is, moreover, somewhat further removed from the "something" than from the "for" and consequently is the method most frequently applied, because it is as it were the cheapest, ofdoing in the name of an ideal all those things that cannot be reconciled with it.
For the advantage of all "for" and "in honor of" consists in the fact that through serving the ideal, everything which the ideal itself excludes is again brought to life. The classic example of this was furnished by the traveling knights of chivalric love, who fell like mad dogs upon every equal they encountered in honor of a condition in their heart that was as soft and fragrant as dripping church wax. But the present, too, is not lacking in small peculiarities ofthis kind. Thus, for example, it organizes luxurious festivals for the alleviation ofpoverty. Or the large number of strict people who insist on the carrying out of public principles from which they know themselves exempt. Then, too, the hypocritical admis- sion that the end justifies the means belongs here, for in reality it is the always active and colorful means for whose sake one usually puts up with ends that are moral and insipid. And no matter how playful such exam- ples Iflay appear, this objection falls silent before the disturbing observa- tion that civilized life doubtless has a tendency toward the most violent outbursts, and that these are never more violent than when they take place in honor of great and sacred, indeed even of tender, emotions! Are they then felt to be excused? Or is the relationship not rather the opposite?
Thus, by many interrelated paths, one arrives at the conclusion that people are not good, beautiful, and truthful, but rather would like to be, and one has a sense ofhow the serious problem ofwhy this is so is veiled by the illuminating pretense that the ideal is, by its very nature, unattain- able. This was more or less what Ulrich said, without sparing attacks on Lindner and what he stood for. Right thinking that was the effortless result of this. It was certain, he maintained, that Lindner was ten times more convinced oftwo-times-two or the rules ofmorality than he was of his God, but by working for his conviction about God, he largely evaded this difficulty. For this purpose he put himself into the condition of be- lief, an attitude in which what he wanted to be convinced ofwas so inge-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1497
niously combined with what he could be convinced of that he himself was no longer able to separate them-
Here Agathe noted that all acting is questionable. She reminded her- self of the paradoxical assertion that the only people who remain real and good in their hearts are those who do not do many good deeds. This now seemed to her extended, and thus confirmed, by the agreeable pos- sibility that the condition of activity was fundamentally the adulteration of another condition, from which it arose and which it pretended to serve.
Ulrich affirmed this once more. 'We have on the one side," he re- peated by way of summary, "people who live for and, without taking the word too literally, in something, who are constantly on the move, who strive, weave, till, sow, and harvest, in a word the idealists, for all these idealists of today are really livingfor their ideals. And on the other side are those who would like to live in some fashion in their gods, but for these there is not even a name--"
"What is this 'in'? " Agathe asked emphatically.
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders and then gave a few indications. "One could relate 'for' and 'in' to what has been called experiencing in a con- vex and experiencing in a concave way. Perhaps the psychoanalytic leg- end that the human soul strives to get back to the tender protection of the intrauterine condition before birth is a misunderstanding of the 'in,' perhaps not. Perhaps 'in' is the presumed descent of all life from God. But perhaps the explanation is also simply to be found in psychology; for every affect bears within it the claim of totality to rule alone and, as it were, form the 'in' in which everything else is immersed; but no affect can maintain itself as primary for long without by that very fact chang- ing, and thus it absolutely yearns for opposing affects in order to renew itself through them, which is pretty much an image of our indispensable 'for'- Enough! One thing is certain: that all sociable life arises from the 'for' and unites mankind in the aim of apparently living for something; mankind mercilessly defends these aims; what we see today by way of political developments are all attempts to put other 'for's in place of the lost community of religion. The living 'for something' of the individual person has lagged behind with the paterfamilias and the age of Goethe. The middle-class religion of the future will perhaps be satisfled with bringing the masses together in a belief that might have no content at all but in which the feeling of beingfor it together will be that much more powerful-"
There was no doubt that Ulrich was evading a decision (about the question), for what did Agathe care about political development!
ON AGATHE
Agathe at Lindner's
During this entire time Agathe was continuing her visits to Lindner. This made extravagant claims on his Account for Unforeseen Loss of Time, and all too often this overdraft meant a reduction in all his other activities. Moreover, empathy for this young woman also demanded a
great deal of time when she was not there:
Thus Lindner had found a soul, but deep tones of discontent were
intermingled with it and kept him in a state of constant irritation. Agathe had simply ignored his forbidding her to visit.
"Does my visiting embarrass you? " she asked the first time she
showed up again.
"And what does your brother say to this? " Lindner replied earnestly
every time.
"I haven't told him anything about it," Agathe confided in him, "be-
cause it might be that he wouldn't like it. You've made me anxious. "
Of course one cannot withhold a helping hand from a person seeking
help.
But every time they made an appointment Agathe was late. It was no
use telling her that unpunctuality was the same as breaking a contract or as lack ofconscience. "It indicates that the rest ofthe time, too, your will is in a slumbering state, and that you're dreamily giving yourself up to things that turn up by chance, instead of breaking away at the right time with collected and focused energy! " Lindner conjectured severely.
"Ifonly it were dreamily! " Agathe replied.
But Lindner declared sharply: "Such a lack of self-control makes one suspect every other kind of undependabilityl"
"Apparently. I suspect that too," was Agathe's response. "Don't you have any will? "
"No. "
"You're a fantasist and have no discipline! "
"Yes. " And after a short pause she added, smiling: "My brother says that I'm a person of fragments; that's lovely, isn't it? Even if it's not clear what it means. One might think of an unfinished volume of unfinished poems. "
Lindner was resentfully silent.
"My husband, on the other hand, is now impolitely asserting that I'm pathological, a neuropath or something like that," Agathe went on.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1499
And thereupon Lindner exclaimed sarcastically: "You don't say! How pleased people are today when moral tasks can apparently be reduced to medical ones! But I can't make things that comfortable for you! "
The only pedagogical success that Lindner was able to achieve he owed to the principle that five minutes before the end of each visit, which was always set and agreed upon beforehand, without regard to its delayed start and however much the conversation might absorb him, he began to fall silent and gave Agathe to understand that he now needed to devote his time to other obligations. Agathe not only greeted this rude- ness with smiles; she was grateful for it. For such minutes of the conver- sation, framed on at least one side as if by a metal edge and ticking sharply, also imparted to the remainder of the day something of their incisiveness. After the extravagant conversations with Ulrich, this had the effect ofleanness or tightly belted straps.
But when she once said this to Lindner, thinking to be nice to him, it immediately made him miss a quarter of an hour, and the next day he was quite indignant with himself.
In these circumstances he was a strict teacher for Agathe.
But Agathe was an odd pupil. This man, who wanted to do something to help her, although most recently he was having difficulties himself, still gave her confidence and even consolation whenever she was on the point of despairing of making any progress with Ulrich. She then sought Lindner out, and not only because, for whatever external reasons, he was Ulrich's adversary, but also and even more because he revealed as clearly as he did involuntarily the jealousy that came over him at the mere mention of Ulrich's name. It was obviously not personal rivalry, for Agathe was aware that the two men hardly knew each other, but rather a rivalry between intellectual species, the way species of animals have their particular enemies, whom they already recognize when they meet them for the first time and whose slightest approach makes them agi- tated. And remarkably, she could understand Lindner; for something that might be called jealousy was also among her feelings toward Ulrich, a not being able to keep up, or an offended fatigue, perhaps too, simply put, a feminine jealousy of his masculine pleasure in ideas, and this made her happy to listen, shivering with pleasure, whenever Lindner contested some opinion or other that could be Ulrich's, and this he espe- cially loved to do. She could go along with this the more safely in that she felt closer to Lindner's level than to her brother's, for however militant Lindner appeared, indeed even though he might intimidate her, there always remained working within her a secret mistrust, which was really I sometimes of the kind that women feel against the endeavors of other women.
1500 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Agathe still felt her heart beating whenever she sat alone for a mo- ment in Lindner's surroundings, as if she were exposed to the rising of vapors that enchanted her mind. The temptation, the unease she felt at making herself feel at ease, the illusive possibility that it might happen, always evoked in her the story ofan abducted girl who, educated among strangers, changed places as it were within herself and became a differ- ent woman: this was one of the stories that, reaching back to her child- hood and without being especially important to her, had sometimes played a role in the temptations of her life and their excuses. But Ulrich had given her a particular interpretation of these stories, from which otherwise it would be easy to deduce merely a deficient spiritual consti- tution, and she believed more passionately in his interpretation than he did himself. For in the length and breadth of time, God has created more than this one life that we happen to be leading; it is in no way the true one, it is one of His many hopefully systematic experiments, into which He has placed no compulsion of necessity for those of us who are not blinded by the light of the passing moment, and Ulrich, talking this way about God and the imperfection of the world and the aimless, meaningless facticity ofits course, stripping away its false order to reveal the true vision of God that represented the most promising approach to Him, also taught her the meaning of the tentative claim of this way of understanding how one could, in a shadowy figuration alongside oneself, also be another.
So as she attentively observed Lindner's walls, which were equipped (hung) with pictures ofdivine subjects, Agathe felt that Ulrich was hov- ering in the vicinity. It occurred to her that she found Raphael, Murillo, and Bernini in individual engravings on the walls, but not Titian, and nothing at all from the Gothic period; on the other hand, there predomi- nated in many of the pictures present-day imitations of that style ala Jesuit Baroque that had sucked up vast quantities of sugar like a puffy omelet. If one followed only these pictures around the walls, the piling up of billowing robes and vacant, uplifted oval faces and sweetish naked bodies was disquieting. Agathe said: There is so much soul in them that the total effect is of a monstrous despiritualization. And look: the heav- enward gaze has become such a convention that all the irrepressible human vitality has taken refuge in the less prominent details and hidden itself there. Don't you find these garment. hems, shoes, leg positions, arms, robe folds, and clouds loaded down by all the sexuality that isn't openly recognized? This isn't too far removed from fetishism!
Well, Agathe ought to know about this phenomenon of being loaded down. This yearningly leaning out from a balcony into the void. Or it's really the other way around: an infinite pressing inward. With horror,
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 5 0 1
one could see it right here on the borderline between pathological crotchet and exaltation.
Lindner had no inkling of this. But the reproach dismayed him, and he first tried speaking of this beauty in a belittling way. The artist must make use of the material and the fleshly, and clings to it; this leads to a lower order ofart. Agathe overestimated it. Art might well propagate the great experiences of mankind but could not turn them into experience.
Agathe then angrily accused him of having too many such pictures. The freedoms that, according to what he said, had to be conceded to the lower humanity in the artist still seemed by that measure to have some meaning even for him. -What? Agathe asked.
Cornered, Lindner gave his views on art. True art is spiritualization of matter. It can represent nakedness only when the superiority of soul over matter speaks from the representation.
Agathe objected that he was mistaken, for it was the superiority not of soul that was speaking, but of convention.
Suddenly he burst out: Or did she think that could justify to a serious person painters' and sculptors' cult of nakedness? - I s the naked human really such a beautiful thing? Something so scandalous! Aren't the trans- ports ofaesthetes simply ridiculous, even ifone doesn't even try to apply serious moral concepts (to them)?
Agathe: - T h e naked body is beautiful! . . . This was a lie, for heaven's sake, whose only purpose was to enrage her partner. Agathe had never paid any attention to the beauty of male bodies; women today regard a man's body for the most part only as an armature to support the head. Men are accustomed to pay somewhat more attention to beauty. But let one gather all the naked bodies with which our museums and exhibitions are filled and put them in a single place, and then seek out from among this confusion of white maggots those that are truly beautiful. The first thing one would notice is that the naked body is usually merely naked: naked like a face that for decades has worn a beard and is suddenly shaven. But beautiful? That the world stops in its tracks whenever a truly beautiful person appears reveals beauty to be a mystery; because beauty-love and love are a mystery, it is true for the whole. Likewise that the concept of beauty has been lost (assembly-line art). So she sits there, and Ulrich speaks through her mouth.
But Lindner immediately jumps at the challenge. -Well! he ex- claimed. -Oh, of course, the modem cult of the body! It excites the imagination in just one direction and inflames it with claims that life can't fulfill! Even the exaggerated concern with physical culture that the Americans have wished on us is a great danger!
-Y ou're seeing ghosts, Agathe said indifferently.
1502 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Lindner to this: -Many pure women, who welcome and participate in such things without a deeper lmowledge of life, don't consider that in doing so they are conjuring up spirits that might perhaps destroy their own lives and the lives of those closest to them!
Agathe retorted sharply: -Should one bathe only once every two weeks? Bite off one's nails? Wear flannel and smell of chilblain oint- ment? . . . It was an attack on these surroundings, but at the same time she felt imprisoned and ridiculously punished for having to argue over such platitudes.
Their conversations often took the form of Agathe's mocking and irri- tating him so that he would lose his temper and ''bark. " This was how she was acting now, and Lindner took on the adversary.
- A truly manly soul will regard not only the plastic arts but also the whole institution of the theater with the greatest reservation, and calmly suffer the scorn and mockery of those who are too effeminate to rigor- ously forbid themselves every tickling of the senses! he asserted, imme- diately adding novels with the remark that most novels, too, unmistakably breathe the sensual enslavement and overstimulation of their authors and stimulate the reader's lower aspects precisely through the poetic illusion with which they gloss over and cover up everything!
He seemed to assume that Agathe despised him for being inartistic, and was anxious to show his superiority. "It is after all dogma," he ex- claimed, "that one must have heard and seen everything in order to be able to talk about it! But how much better it would be if one would be proud of one's lack of culture and let others prattle! One shouldn't con- vince oneself that it's part of culture to look at filth under electric light. "
Agathe looked at him, smiling, without answering. His observations were so dismally obtuse that her eyes misted over. This moist, mocking glance left him uncertain.
